I have a confession to make. I am a bit of a liturgical year failure. I want to acknowledge the cycle of feasts and fasting and celebrate the seasons, but honestly I really don’t get much of it done outside of Advent. Maybe it is our non-crafty ways, but I have been on a quest to find ways to celebrate our faith that are simple and meaningful to my kids.

So I am currently developing a five-point plan. Because the plan is in its early stages, I can’t really speak to all of it right now, but I will share some thoughts on where I am going.

  1. Create a rhythm of prayer
  2. Celebrate the year with simple, meaningful traditions
  3. Attend Mass and adoration often (i.e. more than once a week)
  4. Create sensory reminders of the Faith in the home (appeal to visual, auditory, etc)
  5. Study the Bible, lives of the Saints, and the catechism on a regular basis
If you like this idea and have some things to add, I would love to chat with anyone via email about this. I think multiple heads are better than one.
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Watching the amazing donut machine with friends.

So one of my current projects right now is to create a list of feasts and seasons in the Church year and plug in activities for the days that I think are simple, doable for my family, memorable, and meaningful. Now I will admit that most of the time the meaning comes from the discussion, and not from the sweet treat we consume. The treats and fun activities are the memorable part. The list is a work in progress right now, but I wanted to go ahead and start by celebrating the feast day of St. Joseph.

Here is what we did:
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Adding our own sprinkles. The people at our local Krispy Kreme are so sweet.
After the kids asked about the sprinkle process they brought out a couple of
donuts for the kids to practice on.
  • Waltzing Matilda’s St. Joseph coloring page.
  • Prayed The Presentation mystery of the rosary and discussed the Holy Family’s obedience to God’s law in that mystery. Talked about how we can be obedient to God.
  • Sang the “St. Joseph” song from Sing Bible Prayer Songs.
  • Asked St. Joseph’s intercession for our family and especially for Dad who could not be with us today. (Speaking of, if you are near your dad on this day taking him the donuts and eating them together would be a fun idea.)
  • Visited our local Krispy Kreme and ate donuts in celebration of the feast. (As best I can tell the idea of eating donuts comes from Italian celebrations where Zeppole is a traditional food for a St. Joseph feast. We Americanized it.)
Now I want to point out that there was so much more we could do to celebrate the foster father of Our Lord, including daily Mass attendance, but we did what I was able to do. And we created a memory and attached it to the celebration of this saint. And I am going to let that be enough. We can always grow into more later, but sometimes the best thing is the thing you can accomplish.